The Quality Makers: Kendra Kolb Butler of Alpyn Beauty

Welcome to The Quality Makers, an interview series highlighting pioneers in the direct-to-consumer space. Join us as we get an inside look at the world of digital shopping through the eyes of the individuals shaping it…

Kendra Kolb Butler is the founder of Alpyn Beauty: the only brand to hand-harvest wild plants from Jackson Hole, Wyoming and infuse them into skin care products. She spent most of her career in New York City, but around 2015 she decided to move to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The move was prompted by her need to press the reset button on life. After 20 years in Manhattan, Kendra needed a break from the busyness, the pollution, the crowds, the people. She simply wanted to return to nature, get some fresh air and reevaluate where she was going for the second half of her life and career. Little did she know that Alpyn Beauty was just around the corner.

Did your launch of Alpyn Beauty have anything to do with your move to Wyoming?

KB: “Everything. I never intended to do a skincare line. I left New York and thought I was done with beauty, but after a couple of weeks, I missed it. I decided to open some local beauty stores in my new community because I thought: I know skincare and makeup, I love talking to people about problems they're having with their skin, and I do it pretty well. I opened the stores and brought in 36 lines. I was just selling other people's products, with no intention of creating my own.”

What led you to finally start your own company?

KB: “They say that necessity is the mother of invention. What I started to see in these beauty stores was that women in my new mountain community were coming in with highly distressed skin as a result of the extreme climate that we live in. They were suffering from fine lines and wrinkles, dry and dehydrated skin, hyperpigmentation and dark spots, etc. Jackson Hole is 6200 feet above sea level, so we're really close to the sun, and then you have the fact that there's 40 degree temperature changes from morning to night. There's also little to no humidity in the air and thin oxygen levels. As people were coming into my stores looking for skincare to treat their concerns, I noticed my own skin was going through drastic changes as well. The returns on the skincare lines were pretty high, and I knew I was not going to be able to sustain the stores unless I thought of a solution.

One day, I was sitting in my backyard trying to figure out what to do about this, and I started to really focus in on the forest behind my house. I concentrated on the indigenous wild plants that were growing all over the landscape - they were juicy, thriving, beautiful and plump - the opposite of what everybody's skin was. So I started thinking: what has nature figured out, in terms of adaptation and survival in this climate, that humans haven’t caught onto? If we were able to harvest these botanicals and apply them topically, would our skin get some relief? I realized that nature has done all the work for us, and I wanted to do a little experiment. If I turned some of these wild plants into a clinical formula base and gave it out in my stores, would the women that were buying everything and returning it, find something they actually liked? I wanted to challenge the norm in the skincare industry, which is growing plants and putting them in skincare. Why wasn't anybody using wild plants? Something that had to grow on its own in a very challenging environment. And if it works here, in one of the harshest climates in the United States, on women who have some of the most challenged skin, imagine what it's going to do in places with a more forgiving climate. When I started sending the formulas out to different locations in the country for people to try out, they went from being good to being excellent.”

Nature seems to act as a source of inspiration for the brand, as well as the foundation of it. Tell me more about phrases such as ‘plants are medicine’ and ‘nature provides a solution to everything’.

KB: “There is a lot of undiscovered medicine in nature and in the wild. In order to innovate and move forward, we have to be out there discovering these new actives that can not only tremendously better our skin, but also better our bodies, our minds, our health and our overall well being. I'm extremely inspired by what I haven't found. I have 200 species of wild plants growing on my property in Jackson Hole, and only two of them, maybe three, have ever seen a skincare formula. There's so much untapped, bountiful, abundance of medicine, antioxidants and vitamins growing all around us. Challenging ourselves is how we innovate and move forward.

Since nature has given us so much, Alpyn Beauty is also dedicated to giving back to nature, which is why 1% of every purchase from the skincare line goes towards rewilding our country's national parks, which have been damaged over the years by humans. Nature is the DNA of our brand, so it’s important to question: how do we work in synergy with Mother Earth, with our climate, with this ecosystem, so that there's a mutually beneficial relationship? We're taking and we're giving back, so there's this beautiful circle of trust between the two.”

How do you maintain sustainable production and ethical manufacturing?

KB: “We use a circular harvesting method that we call no harm harvesting. What that means is that when you are wildcrafting a plant that we use in our skincare formulas, we are basically trimming this live plant, we are never removing it from the ground. We don't touch its root system. It's left healthy and intact after we wildcraft. It's very similar to foraging and the way that animals eat off the land. You take what you need, you move on, and the plant continues to thrive in this environment that it's been living in for hundreds of years. Fast forward to you having this regenerative ingredient source - it's a never ending supply chain.”

What are some lessons you’ve learned about skincare & selfcare that you hope to pass on to others?

KB: “One of the life lessons I’ve learned, first and foremost, is if you are unhappy with something in your life, you are the only one who can change that. We have to be the masters of our own future. I knew that living in Manhattan and being in that corporate world was not for my heart, it was not for my soul. There was something wrong. So I listened to my mind and I followed it to this new place, which led me down a path of life that I was not expecting nor anticipating. We all have self doubt, but still I encourage others to make change when necessary.

The second thing I’ve learned is that skin is very resilient. We can apply topical vitamins to our skin that really change the way that we look and feel about ourselves. Finding the right formulas for your skin is just as important as eating healthy food and drinking a lot of water, because this is our body's largest organ and we only get one version of it. Skin is our body's first line of defense against the exterior world - keeping it healthy and being gentle with it can make a huge difference.”

Tell me a bit about the products that you offer.

KB: “Our assortment is small: ten products total. Everything that we formulate starts with a very hydrating base, because we can't have anything that's drying here. Even our lightweight serums and moisturizers leave the skin feeling really soft and really hydrated. We have everything from moisturizers to serums, cleansers and masks:

We have everything from our Melt Moisturizer with Bakuchiol and Squalane ($60) and our Triple Vitamin C Brightening Bounce Cream Moisturizer ($49), to treatment serums, like our Wild Nettle & Niacinamide Instant Firming Serum ($58) and our Vitamin C & Bearberry Instant Glow Serum ($59). We also have our Juneberry & Collagen Hydrating Cold Cream Cleanser ($39), our Creamy Bubbling Cleanser with Vitamin C & AHAs ($36), our Line-Filling Eye Cream with Bakuchiol and Caffeine ($62), our Willow & Sweet Agave Plumping Lip Mask ($28), our Wild Huckleberry 8-Acid Polishing Peel Mask ($56), and lastly, our new Pore Perfecting Liquid with 2% BHA + Borage ($39).”

What do you hope people will take away from engaging with your brand?

KB: “I hope they take away that nature is medicine. It is all around us and it can be extremely healing. But most importantly, I hope they find a way to work in harmony with this ecosystem we call Earth. I believe in clinical ingredients and I use them in all of my formulas, but when clinical hits a wall and can't go any further, it's my belief that these wild plants are what can really push results even further. Since I started using wild plants on my skin, it has started to look and feel better than it did 10 years ago. I passionately believe wild plants are the future of the clean and natural skincare space.”

What are your dreams for the future of Alpyn beauty?

KB: “I believe we could put these actives into anything. Makeup is not out of the question, neither is body care and neither is laundry detergent. The future is wide open. But more generally speaking, I want to continue discovering and finding new actives that can make a significant difference when topically applied to the skin. We're already harvesting things like juneberry, snowberry and wild stinging nettle. We're putting things into skincare that haven't been put there before and that is what motivates and excites me. I also want to continue to give back to the Earth with this line and our community, as they continue to grow. And lastly, I want our contribution to the rewilding of the forests to become more and more significant over time.”